CHAPTER VII.

GOD'S CHANGE OF PURPOSE AT THE REPENTANCE OF NINEVEH, AND THE LIGHT THEREBY FURNISHED FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF HIS WORD AND WAYS.

THE intimation given in the book of Jonah regarding the procedure of God toward Nineveh in the new circumstances in which it now stood, is delivered with great simplicity, and as if no feeling of surprise should have been occasioned by it: "And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not." Important principles, however, are embodied in this statement, and it will require to be viewed in more than one aspect.

1. It may be viewed, first of all, as the record simply of a fact in providence; in which respect the most direct lesson it furnishes is one of ample encouragement to the sincere penitent. When God sent his messenger to Nineveh, the people were so ripe for judgment, that a purpose of destruction, to take effect in forty days, was the only word he could publish in their hearing. But no sooner does he see the message

laid seriously to heart, and the people with one consent returning from sin to God, than the purpose of destruction is recalled, the threatened doom is suspended, and Nineveh is still spared. Nothing could more strikingly show the unwillingness of God to execute vengeance, and the certainty with which every true penitent may count upon finding an interest in his pardoning mercy. He will rather expose his proceedings to the hazard of being misunderstood by shallow and superficial men, than allow the penalty due to unforgiven sin to fall upon such as have turned in earnest from its ruinous courses. What an assurance did the world then receive that God is rich in mercy and plenteous in redemption! He came down, in a manner, to its most public theatre, and in deeds more expressive than words, proclaimed, "Look unto me, all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

At the same time, it is not to be overlooked, that along with this direct lesson, and in close connection with it, there was furnished through the Lord's dealing with Nineveh an indirect warning and instruction to those who persist in impenitence and sin. Viewed, for example, in relation to Israel, the prophet's own people, the sparing of Nineveh on account of its repentance was an anticipatory vindication of God in regard to the severe course he was purposing to adopt

I

in respect to those children of the covenant; it was like the laying down of a solemn pledge before the world, that the desolating judgment, when it should alight on them, must be ascribed, not to any harshness in his character, but solely to their own incorrigible and hardened impenitence. They had claims on his compassion which Nineveh had not; and their destruction in spite of these, viewed in connection with the sparing of that heathen city, was an unanswerable proof of their inexcusable folly and perverseness. They were thus seen to be emphatically the authors of their own ruin. And the same end substantially is still served by the preservation of the repenting Ninevites; it stands as a perpetual witness against the lost, throwing the blame of their perdition entirely upon their own heads; so that God shall be justified when he speaks concerning them, and clear when he is judged.

2. But the sparing of Nineveh on its repentance may be viewed, secondly, in connection with the word spoken to it by Jonah in the name of the Lord-the word announcing its coming doom, in which respect it serves to throw light on the threatenings of God generally. The sharp contrast between what God had spoken and what he actually did—his declaring without reserve a purpose of evil, and still abstaining from the execution of the purpose, was wont to be explained by drawing a distinction between God's secret and his revealed will-between his real intention or decree, which remains, like himself, fixed and immutable,

But

and his declared intention, which may vary with the changeful conditions of those to whom it refers. such a mode of representation, however it may accord with the essential truth of things, wears an unhappy aspect; and even when most carefully guarded and defined, can scarcely be separated from an appearance of insincerity on the part of God, as if he could speak otherwise than he really thinks in his heart. It is far more conformable to our natural feelings, and consistent with just notions of the divine character and glory, to consider such parts of God's procedure as belonging to that human mode of representing his mind and will which is adopted throughout Scripture, and adopted from the absolute impossibility of conveying to us otherwise clear and adequate ideas of God. He who is simply spirit, and a spirit in all the essential attributes of being, free from the bounds and limits of a creature-infinite, eternal, unchangeable-can only be made known to us through his image man, and must be represented as thinking and acting in a human manner. In no other way it possible for us to obtain a realizing sense of his existence, and so to apprehend his manifestations in providence, as to have our affections interested and our wills determined. "Without these anthropomorphisms," or corporeal and human representations of God, to use the words of Hengstenberg, "we never can speak positively of God. He who would disentangle himself from them, as the Deists attempt to do, entirely loses sight of God; while seeking to purify and

is

sublimate the representation of him in the highest possible degree, he is carried, through the illusion of excessive respect, out of all respect. In his anxiety to get rid of human forms, he sinks into nonentities. His relation to God becomes of all others the most untrue, the most unworthy; the nearest is practically to him the farthest, the absolute and essential Being changes for him into a shadow."* And in regard to the expressions in Gen. vi. 6, in which God is declared to have repented that he had made man upon the earth -the strongest, perhaps, in all scripture of the class to which the passage before us belongs-the same author further remarks: "Respect is not had here to the circumstance that God is still glorified upon men, though not in them, but merely to the destination of man to glorify God with a free and willing mind. Were this man's only, as it certainly is his original destination, God must have repented that he had made the degenerate race of mankind. What God would have done had this one point only come into consideration, he is here represented as having actually done, in order to impress upon the hearts of men how great their corruption was, and how deep was God's abhorrence of their sin."+

In like manner, that God should have issued a proclamation dooming Nineveh to destruction, and, in consideration of the people's repentance, should have recalled the sentence, and repented of the evil he had said he would do to it, this was evidently * Authentie, ii. p. 448. + Do., p. 453.